I am amazed by NHT SB-1 speakers. What about SB-3 or SuperOne, even better?

I think my hands were actually shaking a little as I put them in the cart. They were filthy - like they had been in a garage for 10 years. They cleaned up pretty well, but the piano black finish is awful it shows every scratch.

There were stands also which I got and are now in my living room. The Marantz SR-5007 that is the centerpiece of my 7.1 home theater was $85 at a thrift up the street.

 

NHT Xd is worth exploring.

 

I have been using a 50 wpc amp for these comparisons, in a 12 ft x 14 ft bedroom, and it has more power than I can use. The difference between 35 and 50 watts is insignificant. Doubling power is a barely n0ticeable difference in loudness. So I am thinking that maybe less than 12 wpc might be about the power level I would start thinking what kind of loudness or dynamics I might be missing, with 86 dB efficient speakers in a small room. Or 25 watts in a large room.

Considering that the bookshelf size Classic speakers were the worst sounding NHT speakers I heard in my comparisons, and the SB-1, -2, and -3 models are my favorites, I feel much more confident hearing the ST-4 towers than the Classic Towers.

Not yet. I bought the ST4 towers from Ebay, and it is taking the seller time to safely pack them for shipment. That is fine with me, but we just have to wait.

 

Amazon is now offering the Superone 2.1 for $105. Even though I have no need for a pair, I'm tempted.

 

You should be.

 

STOP IT!! MUST RESIST!!

 

Just buy a pair. You will be astounded at how good they sound. No subwoofer needed.

But if you add a single 10" subwoofer in some corner of the room, let the NHTs run full range, and experiment with the subwoofer's low pass frequency between 50 and 70 Hz, wow, even the super low bass becomes amazing, too. There is a Polk 10-inch subwoofer on Amazon for only about $100. It's fun to play with, and hear pop music with powerful AND clean low bass... but you REALLY don't need it with these NHT bookshelfs. The puncy-ness and cleanliness of the bass is really coming from the NHTs. The sub just adds a tiny bit of rumble to go with it.

$200 or $300, for an audiophile, is a very reasonable impulse buy, if you already have some extra audio equipment in the garage or storage to use with them.

 

DON'T STOP YOURSELF from a little cheap enjoyment. Some reasonable temptations are NOT best to resist. The reason I started this thread was to justify MY tempation to buy more than one model of NHT bookshelf speaker, compare them all, and choose the absolute best (to my ears) for my bedroom. So I did all this work: buying, comparing, returning some new ones to Amazon, selling some used ones again on Ebay, writing in this thread all my reviews, not ONLY for my benefit, but for all of you too. And my final result was that for people who want used, the SB 1, 2, and 3 models were 3 of my favorites. For buying new, the SuperOne 2.1 was my favorite also. These 4 models simply blew me away, by just how good little inexpensive bookshelfs can sound. And now here is your chance to get them for about $100 each.

I say grab the opportunity and keep this pair of little speakers for the rest of your life. You can thank me later. You will find many uses for them that you cannot even imagine right now. Remember to keep the felt bags, foam packing and boxes, for times that you don't have a use for them. Or loan them FOR A LIMITED TIME to a friend with need for good sound.

Someday, if you sell or otherwise dispose of your current favorite speakers, put these in their place while you decide what newer speakers to buy. I am warning you that these will shock you. If you have a truly high-end system to hear them through, you won't be in a hurry to buy bigger or "better".

 

I have a home theatre setup consisting of an SC1 center, two SB3’s front right and left, and four SB1’s for sides and rear with Hsu sub. It works very well.

 

Hi Warren, wondering about your opinions on the NHT subwoofers with the bookshelf speakers? I just upgraded to the Parasound HINT 6 which lets me high pass the SuperOnes and low pass my NHT 10" sub. After much fiddling in my difficultly shaped room (and with no software) I have been hearing the best bass with the SuperOnes crossed at 65 and the sub crossed at 60.

 

Fans of NHT speakers, from NHT's Facebook feed.....

Refreshed 1.5? SB Series? If I only have the room, and the money, for the 3.3....

 

Then you are missing the frequencies between 60-65 Hz. The crossover points should be identical.

 

I did add a single 10-inch NHT subwoofer to my system with the SuperOne 2.1 main speakers, and the system sounds remarkably natural, as though I just have a good pair of full size speakers. In my case, I chose to buy a passive subwoofer and a totally unknown (to me) subwoofer amp with built-in low pass crossover. So I am running the SuperOne 2.1 mains full range, and the subwoofer crossed at 60 Hz. Even though the sub is located way off to the side, in a corner of the room, it simply sounds like the bass is coming from the main speakers.

My main amplifier is a somewhat expensive MacCormack Micro-Power, with 50 wpc. The separate subwoofer amp is a really cheapo thing from Amazon, with a pair of RCA inputs, stereo or mono output, with 150 watts mono into the single NHT subwoofer. I like this little subwoofer amp so much, that I bought another one, just to have for later. It is a:

Dayton Audio APA150
Sold by: Parts Express (from the Amazon website)
$169.95

Interesting that we came up with exactly the same low pass frequency as our favorite for the sub. And I find it amazing that such a cheapo audio system, with just a simple Blu-Ray DVD player as source can sound so good. I giv credit to the NHT speakers, the Dayton subwoofer amp, and the MacCormack power amp, mostly, for how good it all sounds together, becaue everything else just looks like cheapo junk to me: ancient Audioquest cables, $150 remote control preamp from China on Ebay, and nothing special Sony DVD player HDMI output that goes to a TV's D/A converter, to provide the RCA conncetion to the simple little preamp.

 

No, many crossovers have a control to slide the crossover frequencies together (overlap) or apart (gap), adjustable by ear, to make-up for parts tolerances, different crossover slopes, rolled-off speaker response in thier bass output, etc. It is perfectly valid to accomplish the same thing with fine adjustments of the crossover frequencies to personal taste, or with test tones and a meter.

 

I wonder what the time frame is? I'm starting to think about new speakers and a new 3.3, 2.9 or an Evolution T5 or T6 would be great.

 

Perhaps a 2.5i v2 would be a bit easier to pull off, or the VT- 1.2 2.1 (with the Super Zero drivers). Can't believe they'd sell a bundle of 'em, though.

 

I think it all hinges on the price they will want for them. Those heritage models were good deals back in the day...that may not hold true for these resurrected models.

 

Yep.

 

On the Facebook post they also mentioned the cost of shipping a 3.3 might be an issue since they're direct sellers now.

 

Maybe...but many resellers like Music Direct and such offer free shipping on speakers. If they can do it as a middle man, surely NHT can figure out how to make it work selling directly to the consumer.

 

Here's the exact quote:

"We actually are in the middle of bringing back/refreshing some signature heritage product. The 3.3's are high up on the list, though not the next immediate project.

There are some issues with bringing back the 3.3's, none of which have to do with profit or the sprinkled salt in Ken Kantor's + Chris' hard earned retirements. If anything, signature lines make more profit than say the budget lines. The main issue would be the size and weight. Many customers aren't able or willing to accept freight. Yet changing the size would compromise what made the 3.3 so special. As we no longer use showrooms due to the change in buying culture, this makes shipping and coordination harder."

 

I've had the VT-2, VT1.2, Superzeros, VS-2, VS1.2 and always wanted to try the 3.3 but went the Proac route after over 20 years of using NHT's. They were all great speakers for the money. Those VT-2's were fantastic and my favorite of the bunch.

 

IF there is overlap. However, in the case above I was responding to, the frequencies between 65 and 60Hz are being missed entirely, and are not being reproduced by the transducers at all as the crossover is happening within the integrated amp. Not good!

 

No, if you think the little range of 5 Hz is "being missed entirely" then you don't understand the basic concepts of slope, turnover frequencies, and the sum of two complex frequency response curves. You are over-simplifying the numbers without fully understanding what they mean.

In the low bass region, the bass response of the speaker is far from flat, and the two crossover filter regions are slopes, being added together, with non-linearities of room acoustics. This all makes for very complex sums in net frequency response, and makes crossover settings very approximate. Trial-and-error with human ears or tones and a SPL meter are required to fine tune this region by adding a gap or overlap in the crossover settings.

 

While I never owned a pair, we used VT-2's at work, so I heard them very often. The VT-2's were definitely nice speakers.

I do own VT-1a's, VT-1.2's, Super Zeroes, VT-1C's, and VS-2a's. Of those, I like the VT-1a's best. Super Zeroes with bass. Dynamic speakers too. For some reason, I could never warm up to the VT-1.2's. Tighter dispersion made them constricted sounding. No bloom. Too dry, I guess?